My essay will focus on the topic of cloning. Last year, I did a project on social knowledge on this subject, I was interested in it and wanted to study this issue in more detail. And it seems to me that this is an ideal topic for the theme 'technology of the 21st century'
“What is cloning, and how can it threaten humanity?”
Sooner or later, everyone will leave this world. When our beloved people leave us, tragedy for everyone, and great sorrow. In this state, a person is capable of much and is ready to sacrifice everything to return a loved one to the living world.
This, of course, is just fantastic, but perhaps someday medicine will be able to make an exact copy of a person.
Initially, the word clone began to be used for a group of plants (for example, fruit trees) obtained from a single producer plant in a vegetative (non-seed) way. Over time, the meaning of the term expanded and began to be used when growing bacteria cultures. Later, the name “cloning” was also transferred to the technology of obtaining identical organisms obtained by such technology, from the first tadpoles to animals.
A clone is if you place an egg in the cell nucleus of another individual, the cub will be an exact copy of its donor. In practice, the hypothesis was confirmed only after 20 years, when the mouse was cloned, but it immediately died from diseases of the immune system. Since then, scientists have managed to clone pigs, sheep, cows, and dogs, but these experiments can hardly be called successful, about 3% of the experimental subjects survived and gave birth, with many physical abnormalities. One of the first successful experiments on animal cloning was the world-famous lamb, Dolly. She was cloned in 1996, and 276 attempts were made, the clone was not perfect, as she was aged 2 times faster than her relatives, because she was cloned from adult cells.
The first experiments led to mass protests and demonstrations of people in different countries, demanding to stop experiments in this area. Religion also did not stand aside and supported by the public. After experimenting with Dolly, enterprising people began to make money from this, one such example is a cloned Sisi kitten. It was supposed to be a live advertisement for a company that was supposed to make money on resurrecting pets. At the end of the experiment, the kitten was not like his mother and because of this, the company went bankrupt.
In most countries, cloning is prohibited. Experts speak out in favor of lifting or easing the ban but under the strictest state control. Human curiosity, and hence scientific interest, is ineradicable. Many people do not want to limit themselves to cloning their favorite cats or dogs. It’s scary to even guess what this might lead to.
Yes, we have already learned to clone individual human organs, and this is of course a great contribution to medicine. And maybe in the future, it will save more than one life, but there is still a lot to do.
My opinion is that from a scientific point of view, cloning is progress, to prevent various diseases in the future. But cloning people is unnatural, humanity is not on the verge of extinction to raise the population of people on earth through cloning. After all, such an intervention can lead to irreversible consequences.